Bring the broadband: can better connectivity level up Britain’s economy?
This article speaks about the economic rationale behind giving rural areas better access to broadband. It tells us:
To tackle this, the government pledged £5bn in its election manifesto toward providing gigabit-capable broadband – a speed seen as the gold standard – to every household and business in the UK by 2025. This would concentrate efforts on remote rural areas that have traditionally been ill-served.
With both domestic and business users consuming more bandwidth than ever before, it’s a timely intervention. Ofcom figures suggest that both fixed and mobile internet connections used about a quarter more data in 2019 than 2018.
However, the current proposals are watered down from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s earlier promise to provide full-fibre broadband – that is, a fibre optic cable link – to every address in the UK, which some critics considered over-ambitious. Instead, it’s now assumed that gigabit-per-second speed will be delivered via a mix of different technologies.
In some places, this will still involve laying fibre optic cable to the premises. Currently, many who use it rely on a fibre optic link only to the nearest street-level cabinet, with the so-called “final mile” (sometimes no more than a few yards) connected via copper cables.
Elsewhere, it seems more likely that faster speeds will be achieved by co-opting Virgin Media’s existing hybrid cable network. This is thought to happen largely through the use of 5G masts, which deliver a fast, wireless connection over the “final mile”. It’s believed that the government will try to broker shared-service agreements between the two companies that provide masts for the UK’s mobile networks, so that all end-users can benefit regardless of their service provider.